


Choose, Yet Again

by Sera_Clay



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-16 11:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 9,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3486089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_Clay/pseuds/Sera_Clay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzington, angst, follows "Choose, and Choose Again" (Chapter 8 of "In Bed"). Continued from the one shot at the request of RedxLizzie. All the usual disclaimers re: non-ownership apply.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Choose For Good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedandLizzie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedandLizzie/gifts).



The tall black man in the puffy American parka visited the organic farm outside Vernon, B.C. twice. The first time was in winter, and he didn't stay long.

The second time, he brought two men with guns. It was spring time, and they all tramped through the wet grass thick with flowers to the crest of the hillside. The farm was visible, and a slice of blue water, and beyond it the folds of purple mountains.

He stood and looked down at the paler grass on the newest mound, then drew out his phone and took several photos of the headstone. The old woman in the red kerchief stepped back and bowed her head. 

Then he knelt as the other two men stood about awkwardly. The knees of his khakis were wet and muddy when he rose.

As they watched, the old woman stepped forward, crossed herself, and pressed a kiss to her fingers, then reached over and touched the small gray slab carved simply with 'Elizabeth and Baby Son' above the date.

"They're at peace now," she said softly. "No one can ever hurt her again."

***

Raymond Reddington no longer talks only to Agent Keen. He talks to anyone at the FBI who will listen. 

Dembe follows even the most tenuous of leads, but Elizabeth Keen has vanished.

British Columbia is such an unlikely place for his search to come to an end.

"Raymond." 

Dembe has to drive down into Vernon to get cell service. The men in the front seat, hired muscle from Vancouver, listen to the radio without even bothering to eavesdrop.

"Yes, Dembe? Tell me some good news. I've had nothing but rain and dreary conversations with Donald for the past three days."

"I'm sorry, Raymond. The news is very bad."

Dembe would do anything not to make this call. Anything, except lie to his blood brother. He promised to stay in touch.

"Tell me."

"I'm so sorry." He pauses, trying to decide what to say before texting the photos.

"Was she?" Red asks into the silence.

"They are buried together."

Dembe hears just one, incredulous sob before the phone disconnects.

He texts the photos, closes the phone. If he were a drinking man, this would be the time.

***

"Tell me exactly what she said."

Red is sitting in the darkness, just the firelight playing over his still features, glinting from the crystal glass of scotch in his hand. Several empty bottles sit on the table in front of him, and dirty glasses litter every surface.

Dembe crosses the room and sits beside Red. Ignoring the heat and smell of the room.

"This woman, Margeta, she is the house mother. She claims that when I first arrived, the events were ... very recent. That they lied to protect the other women, in case they were blamed for what happened."

"Why wasn't she in hospital? Did they keep her out there, against her will?"

Dembe shakes his head.

"No, she refused to see a doctor. She never went back into town, not once after she arrived."

Red takes another sip of his scotch.

Dembe waits for the next question. They have been over this on the phone. More than once, on that long flight home.

"And she never gave him a name?"

Dembe shakes his head again. 

"She did not survive to see him born."

He holds out his arms as Red collapses forward into them, sobbing drunkenly.

***

Margeta tucks a few stray wisps of white hair up under her red kerchief as she stirs the huge pot of chicken stew simmering on the back of the stove. 

"Tell me exactly what he said," Liz asks, rapidly cutting out biscuits and setting them in lines on the waiting baking sheets.

"I believed that headstone was a foolish waste of money," the old woman says, shaking her head. 

"You couldn't know," responds Liz. Dembe. Not the FBI. She can't help but feel touched.

"He said he found out that we lied to him. He searched the entire house, woke the whole nursery in the middle of nap time."

Liz carries the first two trays to the preheated oven, and waits until Margeta opens the door, then slides them in.

"I'm so sorry about the guns," she says.

Margeta shrugs. 

"Wasn't the first time, won't be the last."

The big white farmhouse can hold sixteen women, two to a room, but there are only seven in residence at the moment, plus the babies, along with Liz, Margeta, and elderly Alaine who lives above the stables. The rest of the farmhands are day labor.

"It was just luck that I wasn't here," says Liz somberly. "We're going to need to move on again."

A tall, slim teenager with long blond braids wanders into the room, a plump, drooling baby on each hip. 

"He's getting hungry again, Beth," she says, waiting for Liz to place the last two trays of biscuits in the oven before handing her son to her.

Liz settles him onto her lap and begins nursing him, stroking his fluffy copper curls back from his forehead.

"He's always hungry," she muses, smiling down at him, "Aren't you, my sweetheart, my darling, my Ray?"


	2. Choose Freedom

"I don't like this at all!" Ressler slams down a handful of papers in front of Aram. Samar looks over, shrugs, and wanders across the room to join them.

"We're closing at least two cases a month, sometimes more," Aram protests, scratching his head.

"Yeah, but look," responds Ressler, opening the cover of one file folder after another. Pointing to the initials "EK."

"Every case Reddington has brought us since he got back from that little jaunt to Mongolia, or wherever he really went, have been cases she was never able to solve."

He looked from Aram's confused dark eyes to Samar's frown.

"You believe he's finishing the work she left undone?"

Aram looks from one unhappy face to the other.

"But why would he do that, unless ...?"

Ressler slams one fist down on the files.

"Exactly. He knows something he's not telling us."

Samar shakes her head, dark curls bouncing.

"And it's certainly not good news."

***

Raymond Reddington saunters into the Post Office with Dembe close behind him.

He gives Ressler's new partner Lynne Meers, a tall blond woman in a poorly tailored Calvin Klein suit, an assessing glance that barely misses being a sneer.

"Where is everyone?" he asks her, his lips curling as he gazes around the quiet room. There are a few low level techs at work, but the team is gone, and Cooper's office is dark.

"Whatever it is, you can tell me," Lynne responds. Her pale blue eyes are flat with dislike. She's a highly decorated transfer from Chicago, but she has no sense of humor.

Red shakes his head briskly, adjusts the brim of his fedora. Lynne seems unusually hostile.

"Left you out of the fun, did they?" he questions her, stepping closer and allowing his cold eyes to rake her face. Donald isn't here to protect her from him today.

Behind him, he hears Dembe clearing his throat.

"I wouldn't call it fun," she spits back at him. His gaze sharpens. She knows something. Something they have instructed her not to tell him.

Red takes a step back, shrugs gracefully, lets his hands fall open.

"Well, I'm all about the fun, so I'll leave you to it," he tells her blithely.

As he and Dembe step into the elevator, she's still standing there, glaring after him, her hands curled into fists.

***

In the breezy winter sunlight, Margeta hangs out one clean blue and yellow checked dishtowel after another as she watches the stout older man breaking a path through the snow towards the graves. He's warmly dressed for the weather, in a long coat, a muffler, and a wool hat more appropriate for the city than the remote countryside of the farm. His eyes are hidden behind large brown lenses.

This is his second visit. He's alone this time. That armload of bright tropical flowers didn't come from any florist in Vernon.

Margeta shakes her head. It's the date. That's why he's here. 

At least he took her refusal to answer any questions in good part. Almost as if he was forcing himself to ask them.

The last time he wept until his friend had to lead him back down the hill. Sound carries in the open countryside. She'll go inside, finish the laundry later if he starts again this time. She never wants to hear those noises again, like a wounded animal, her every instinct to relieve that terrible pain.

But the women who come here for refuge do so only as a last resort. Margeta would never betray any of them, least of all Beth, who is now doing such good work counseling teenage girls at their larger, waterfront shelter outside Vancouver. She's built a new life. She doesn't need to know about this visit.

Grief passes, like all things in this life.


	3. Choose Friendship

Samar gets out of the car alone, leaving Ressler waiting at the wheel in front of the modest bungalow. When she shows her badge, Mary-Christine Kassar steps out onto her porch, closing the door behind her.

"Elizabeth Keen."

"No, I don't know her." She shakes her short, silver-laced black curls, even after Samar shows her the head shot photo of Liz.

"She's not just a fellow agent, she's my friend," says Samar, pulling out the photo Aram pulled from a traffic camera using facial recognition software. It took months to trace Dembe's erratic path in Red's jet, to discover multiple visits to Vancouver. "We know she was in your car less than a month ago."

"No. I don't know her."

"I can get a warrant, take your home apart, your life, your job," says Samar. "We can seize your car, all your vehicles."

The woman covers her face. Silence. Samar is missing something.

"Agent Ressler, her partner, he's in the car," Samar says softly. "Please, just let us explain. You can call the local FBI office, verify our credentials."

Ten minutes later, Mary-Christine lets them in.

Her husband holds her hand as she listens to the story of Liz vanishing. She looks again and again at Ressler, rumpling his auburn hair in agitation as he describes the operation in broad strokes, how Liz might have been snatched in revenge.

"I'll take her a message, if I can find her," Mary-Christine promises at last.

***

Liz smiles at Ressler across the crowded Starbucks in Seattle, folds her hands so the scratched gold wedding band is visible when he reaches her booth. It was the only one at the pawn shop that fit her. The afternoon sun slants brightly through the windows, belying the spring chill in the air.

"Oh my god, Keen!" he exclaims.

She rises and embraces him, her long wool skirt brushing the floor. Liz dressed modestly for this visit, a lace-trimmed scarf pinned over her long dark hair.

He asks her to explain as soon as he sits down.

"I saw his body floating, and I thought, if it could happen to Raymond Reddington, then what chance do I have?"

She shakes her head, as if in shame. 

"I lost my nerve, I was afraid, and I ran."

She meets Ressler's skeptical gaze.

"I have a husband now, a new life. Please don't destroy it."

He glances past her, over her shoulder.

"Really? Surveillance?" she asks him, her heart beating faster. If they take her in, examine her, they'll know. 

Red had too many enemies. The only way to protect Ray is to keep him hidden.

"We all wanted to see you," he confesses. He signals, and Samar comes hurrying in to embrace her, then Aram with his gentle smile, even Harold Cooper limping with his cane.

They visit, drink coffee, ignore her broken attempts at apologies.

Cooper promises to leave her on "Missing, Presumed Dead" status for another year, in case she changes her mind about returning.

Aram is the last to depart.

"Shall I say hello to Mr. Reddington from you?" he asks her, sipping his takeaway caramel macchiato.

"Say hello?" she repeats, still sitting in the booth or she would have collapsed to the floor. "What do you mean?"

Aram shrugs. "When we get back to DC, I'm sure he'll have a new blacklister."

Liz shakes her head fiercely.

"Please, Aram, don't say a word. Don't let the others tell him you found me."

She looks down into the mug holding her decaf cappuccino. She's clinging to it with both hands, which Liz hopes looks like fear.

"Just promise me. He ... he might hurt my husband."

Aram goes solemn.

"No worries," he promises her.


	4. Choose Truth

Liz drives off the last ferry and makes her way to the shelter. She calls the unlisted number and then waits in her car for the night staff to let her in the back gate.

Ray is asleep in the nursery. She leaves him and wanders into the big, warm kitchen.

"Beth? Are you OK?"

Eliza, a heavily pregnant teen Liz doesn't know very well yet, is sitting at the round oak table drinking cinnamon tea. 

Liz crosses to the stove, takes a hand-thrown brown mug from the open shelf above the big glass jar filled with tea bags. Reaches for the kettle. Hot water splashes to the floor, almost burning her shaking hand. 

"Beth, sit down."

Eliza guides her to the table, fixes the tea, and places the mug in front of her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" 

Liz shakes her head, then speaks.

"I found out that Ray's father is alive."

She stares into the amber depths of the mug.

"Did you try to kill him?" Eliza asks curiously.

Liz blinks over at her. Eliza is five feet tall, with glossy dark hair pinned up on her head and tiny gold cross earrings in her pierced ears.

Wordlessly, she shakes her head again. That floating yellow slicker.

Almost two years. 

***

Dembe gives Lynne Meers a reproachful look when she shuts off her computer screen just as Red leans over her shoulder.

"Nothing here to interest you," she says, pushing her chair back so that Red has to step sideways to get out of her way.

"And how would you know what interests me?" he asks, rocking back on his heels and surveying the room. Dembe follows his gaze.

Everyone is back, hard at work. But there's something different. An odd lightness in the air. Ressler has a new haircut, long strands falling rakishly over his forehead. Aram has trimmed his beard.

Dembe frowns at Samar Navabi.

He's never seen those earrings before. And she's smiling at one of the techs, even giving Aram a little pat on the shoulder in passing.

Outwardly calm, he follows Red to Cooper's office to discuss the the next blacklister, but his intuition is warning him that they need to find out what has changed, and fast.

***

It's four in the morning by the time Liz dials Dembe's number. Past dawn on the east coast. 

"Who is this?"

"Please don't hang up," she whispers.

"Who is this?" He asks again, sounding completely spooked.

"Dembe, I just found out today that Red is alive. I need your help. Are you alone?"

"Elizabeth? What? Why?"

She texts him a photo in answer.

"Please help me. Help me tell him," she whispers again.


	5. Choose Trust

Almost there. Another 30 minutes.

Red adjusts his new tie one more time and looks across the aisle of his jet at Dembe.

"A little bright," Dembe comments.

Red shrugs, a little sheepishly.

"Babies like primary colors."

***

Red looks up from his beer mug as she approaches, a sturdy toddler balanced on one hip, a large blue diaper bag swinging from the opposite shoulder.

He and Dembe rise from their seats as one.

Liz digs into the diaper bag and extracts a baggie of Cheerios and a sippy cup filled with water, placing them on the scarred wooden table before seating herself on the bench opposite them, Ray balanced on her lap.

His son.

Red sits down across from them and smiles, for the first time, into curious green eyes beneath a tousled mass of loose copper ringlets. The little boy smiles back, then makes a grab for the Cheerios.

"I'm sorry, the ferry line was unusually long today," says Liz, brushing her long dark hair back from her face. She's in jeans and a loose cream cable knit sweater.

Red would have waited forever for her.

"We've had some of this delightful local beer while we waited," he responds, turning to Dembe for confirmation. "And Dembe has ordered us a pizza, which should arrive at any moment."

"Great," Liz returns. She keeps staring at him, her wide blue eyes dazed in contrast to her practical appearance. Making no move to reach for the mug of dark beer Dembe pours from the clear plastic pitcher.

Red gives his head a little shake, raises his eyebrows. 

"Yes, Lizzie?"

She blinks and looks down at Ray, who is carefully eating each Cheerio by picking it up between his thumb and forefinger. Looks back up at Red.

"I thought you were dead," she says without ceremony. "I never would have kept him from you. Never. You need to believe that."

Red nods. He's taken a rather potent tranquilizer just to enable himself to get through this first meeting with any degree of composure. 

"Dembe told me it was a foolish plan," he answers at last, looking away from her eyes to watch Ray taking a drink. The toddler uses both hands to hold the cup by the little blue plastic handles. The spout of the cup has tooth marks. "I'm so sorry, Lizzie. So very sorry."

She's looking down now, watching Ray as well.

They've only been here for five minutes, and he's already run out of things to say. Red has so many questions, but he doesn't want to rush her. Pressure her. Liz hasn't told him her address, or what name she's using now. She could just disappear again.

"May I hold him?" asks Dembe.

"Of course. He loves strangers." Liz flushes. 

She just called him a stranger.

Dembe reaches across the table, lifts Ray up against his big shoulder. "We'll go check on the pizza."

Red leans across the table, holds out his hands.

"Lizzie?" he says.

Appearing reluctant, she puts her small, cold hands in his. 

"He's beautiful," Red says. "Is there anything, anything in the world, that you want or need?"

He meant to say, 'for Ray,' but watching her eyes fill with tears has thrown him off.

"It's enough that you forgive me," she responds, giving his hands a little squeeze.

His own eyes are wet. Red can't think of what to say next.

He loved her, even if he never spoke those words in their short time together, and he threw that love away with his arrogance, his schemes.

Two years. 

He and Dembe are strangers now, dangerous strangers who can only put her safe little world at risk.

Red can't believe that fate could be so impossibly cruel. He's about to walk away from his family again.


	6. Choose Hope

Dembe returns with Ray, hands him back to Liz, and leaves again for the restroom.

She bounces Ray on her lap, trying not to ask Red any questions about the last two years. From what she remembers, he never really answers her questions anyway. Pulling her son's small, wriggling body against her with one arm, she reaches for her mug of beer. Ray squirms.

"Would you like to hold him?" she ask Red, as the beer sloshes in the mug.

There's a long silence as Red gazes over the table at Ray.

"You don't have to ..." Liz begins. Red is wearing a pristine three piece tailored tweed suit, set off by an unusually bright plaid silk tie. His wool fedora sits at the far end of the table, as far away as possible from the liquids.

"Here we go." Red reaches out, exposing his pristine white cuffs, and lifts Ray from her hands. Seats him on his lap and hands him a spoon. Ray gnaws on it, looking up at Red curiously.

A tall, acne-scarred server with large white gauge earrings distending his earlobes arrives with their deep dish pizza, and balances it on a stand in the center of the table as Red slides over a little on the bench to keep Ray from grasping at the hot metal pizza pan.

"You have a beautiful grandchild, sir," he exclaims.

From across the table, Liz watches Red's face change, his expression of wonder fading. Something cold and weary taking its place.

She reaches across the table, rubs Ray's back comfortingly as he starts to look worried, his wide green eyes fixed on Red.

"We get that a lot, because I look so young," Liz dimples up at the server. "But he's actually the dad."

The server blushes and apologizes, before retreating and returning with a bowl of salad, plates, and more apologies.

Red still looks bleak.

She's not hungry anymore.

***

"Talk to her," Dembe urges him, as Red waits outside the restaurant, watching as Ray toddles from one side of the pathway to the other.

They are sitting on benches facing each other, watching Ray navigate the pebbles between them, again and again. The afternoon sun is heating the channel, intensifying the salt smell of the air wafting in past the old lighthouse.

"She's willing to meet us again. That's more than I expected," returns Red, fedora perched on his knee. Ray has removed it from his head many times already. He looks toward the restaurant. Liz is approaching, walking fast without the burden of the diaper bag sitting at his feet.

"Do not be a fool," says Dembe, smiling down at Ray, who is swaying unsteadily on his feet.

Not more than he has been, already. And irretrievably.

Red tries to imagine something he could say to her. She's going to take Ray, and get in her car, and leave. 

He has to be able to bear that, not just this once, but over and over again. 

He needs more tranquilizers.

***

As she walks towards the men playing with her toddler, Liz slows, allowing the reality to sink in.

Red is alive.

She's barely touched him, just held his hands across the table.

Why did her admittedly hazy assumptions about today include fierce embraces, passionate kisses?

It's been two years. Dembe told her Red is currently unattached; it was one of the first things she asked when she called. She needed to know whether she would be stepping into some deadly game with one of his female associates.

To be fair, Red never pretended to love her. In his arms, Liz did her best not to betray her own feelings, and after Tom, her best could be pretty remarkable. And now she's just another of the many women from Red's past.

Even if everything between them is over, she wants Ray to know and love his father.

She just doesn't know yet how to find her way through to that as a reality. Lying to the FBI about the reason she disappeared was a very bad start.


	7. Choose Patience

"Raymond has something to tell you," says Dembe, as Liz gets close enough to hear.

She looks down at Red, who has placed his fedora on Ray's head as the toddler stands swaying, clutching his knees.

Red shoots Dembe a bitter look but doesn't demur.

"Yes?" Liz sits down on the other end of the bench and turns toward Red. Ray tries to lift the hat off his head to show her.

"I'll take him for a little walk to the lighthouse," says Dembe, lifting Red's hat and placing it on his own head, then swinging Ray, giggling, up onto his shoulders.

Liz watches them go.

Red clears his throat.

She looks over at him, comparing the man sitting beside her to the lover she remembers.

His skin is so pale, the deep, soft pouches beneath his eyes dark as bruises. Red blinks at her, the sweep of his thick, light lashes triggering a visceral memory.

He lies beneath her, laughing, sweating in the sunshine in the hidden courtyard behind their rented villa. Her hands cradling his head, she licks the sweat from his lips between kisses, runs the tip of her tongue along the line of those lashes, as Red closes his eyes and trembles for her.

Madness. 

She's a mother now, not an agent. Liz hasn't fired a weapon in months. She's utterly unprepared to keep Ray safe in Red's dangerous world. Even if he wanted her back.

She needs to stay strong for just a little longer.

"Yes?" Liz repeats, when she realizes Red is just staring back at her, his mouth tightening as if he disapproves of what he sees.

Her clothing is inexpensive and machine washable. Her hair is long, straight and unstyled. She's once again conscious of the new lines on her face, the extra weight at her hips.

With one arm draped casually over the back of the bench, Red looks elegant, untouchable.

She raises her chin.

"You're really not going to tell me where you live? Where you work?" he says.

Liz frowns. The implications are obvious. If he starts looking for her, poking around, he might draw the attention of the FBI or others.

"I live and work at a women's shelter," she says reluctantly. "The name on my passport is Beth Farmer."

"And Ray's birth certificate?"

She shakes her head. Why is he asking about these things? Surely, he could have said all this in front of Dembe.

"He doesn't have one."

Liz has located a source for one. She just hasn't been able to force herself to purchase it yet. To put down 'Father: Unknown'. At least Sam was on her birth certificate. At least when she was Elizabeth Keen.

***

Red pours them both a drink as they wait for the pilot to receive clearance.

"Why didn't you talk to her?" 

Dembe seldom sounds so unsympathetic. He gave both Liz and Ray affectionate hugs and kisses as they parted.

Red stepped back when he realized Liz, burdened with Ray and the diaper bag, wasn't going to initiate an embrace. She didn't seem to want to touch him at all.

"She's not interested, so there's nothing to be gained," he responds, swallowing half the glass of scotch as if it were water. That she is willing to bring Ray to him again in two weeks is enough of a miracle.

He needs to figure out how to arrange these meetings safely. Perhaps a seaplane? A yacht with a helipad?

"She was very careful," responds Dembe, "Very controlled. You need to think about Elizabeth, instead of yourself."

Then, to Red's astonishment, Dembe sets down his untasted drink and goes up front to sit with the pilot.

***

"Why the hell is he in Seattle?" Ressler mutters to himself. Ever since Samar figured out that Reddington discovered a way to selectively misdirect the broadcast from his tracking chip, Aram has been working on corresponding ways to recover the original signal.

Evenings and weekends, Ressler sometimes plays around with Aram's latest effort. They don't discuss this game of cat and mouse, but Red must surely know they're working on it.

Frowning at his laptop screen, Ressler decides to put the time and effort into requisitioning a satellite. Seattle is too close to Vancouver for this to be a coincidence. If Red's not just misdirecting the signal again.

He'll do whatever it take to keep Liz and her new husband safe.


	8. Choose Security

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies in advance to any Keenler fans if this chapter hits certain notes for you; the fic will stay Lizzington.

Dembe pulls on his navy pea coat and goes up on deck to watch the dolphins jumping off the bow.

Red and Liz are taking turns holding Ray as he points at seabirds, otters, dolphins, and the occasional orca. He hasn't seen them touch yet.

Dembe scowls as the small, fast power yacht churns past another rocky cove, ringed with tall pines and firs. It's been three hours, and they're on their way back across the sound without any progress that he can discern.

It's true that Ray is quite comfortable with Red by now. And Liz seems marginally less tense, although she still appears to be terribly self-conscious and controlled to Dembe. Not only because becoming a mother has matured her, made her less impulsive. He's sure there's something more.

***

Lynne Meers has just stepped from the elevator when Red arrives at the Post Office. Dembe is still in the car, finishing his phone call to Mozambique.

"Just in time for the celebration," she sneers at Red.

He gives the tall blond agent his most uninterested look. She's carrying a banker's box in addition to her purse and her briefcase.

"Leaving us already?" he inquires with a nod to the box. 

She bares her teeth at him in a patently false smile.

"Reassigned once again. Not only is Ressler's partner Keen back in the game, he's engaged to marry her as well."

Red examines Lynne's unhappy face closely. She doesn't appear to have been drinking.

She smirks at his obvious confusion.

"Yeah, they even have a kid together. Sickeningly cute, huh? Everyone's celebrating and eating cake."

Red swallows hard, then gives her a nod.

"Thanks for the tip, Agent Meers," he manages. Liz called earlier, several times, but he hasn't returned her calls. Was she really planning to tell him this on the phone? "I'm not much for cake, so you've spared me the discourtesy of refusing it."

Ignoring her sour glare, he whirls and strides rapidly back to the car.

"Change of plans. We're going to Mozambique to handle it personally."

Dembe tilts his head curiously.

"Abraham is willing to handle the matter for us," he replies as he starts the car.

Red leans back, puts on his sunglasses, and then covers his eyes with one hand.

"Please, just drive," he says softly.

***

Liz dresses herself in the brocade ivory sheath dress and matching satin heels, examines her softly pinned hair in the hotel room mirror. It's just a civil ceremony, but they want the photographs to look right.

"Are you dressed?"

Ressler comes through from the adjoining room, fastening his cuffs, his damp bronze hair slicked down against his head.

"Yes. The sitter just picked up Ray," she responds. 

"Everyone's downstairs," he informs her, shrugging into his tuxedo jacket and tugging it down to lie flat on his shoulders.

Their eyes meet in the mirror.

"Ress, you know I can't thank you enough..." she begins.

He raises one hand.

"Forget it, Keen," he says roughly. 

She shakes her head. "I never will. You're giving me back my life."

He holds out his arm to escort her downstairs. 

"Aram's got the rings. Let's do this."


	9. Choose Misdirection

The jazz band plays softly and a few of the guests dance, the rest sitting in small groups, chatting and drinking champagne from the engraved flutes that will serve as wedding favors. 

Ressler and Liz stroll from one table to the next after their obligatory first dance, posing for pictures and showing off their rings. Toasting each group with fresh glasses.

Her family from Nebraska and his cousins from the Midwest are slowly warming to each other.

Aram and Samar dance every dance. Cooper and his wife sit together, holding hands.

Most of their guests are FBI, CIA, or law enforcement. Some of the younger men and women look cynical. Many of the older ones look a little sad.

Raymond Reddington is prominently absent. Liz would have invited him, but neither he nor Dembe are returning her calls. Cooper says they're in Maputo, hunting down the next blacklister.

The sitter brings Ray down in his pajamas for a few minutes just after the ceremony, but then leaves to put him to bed.

There will be only two pictures of him in the wedding album, both of Ressler holding him as he reaches sleepily out towards Liz.

The happy little family.

Liz is practically in tears by the end of the evening as she embraces her departing guests.

Ray is safe at last. No one will ever doubt Ressler's paternity. Her new husband even has the same blood type as Red.

***

Liz smiles up from the reports covering her desk when Aram taps at her office door.

"You wanted the results of my latest tracker?" he asks her.

Red is still finding new ways to block his chip. Aram enjoys the challenge of matching wits with the best technical experts the Concierge of Crime can hire.

"Still in Mozambique. Which seems pretty unlikely."

Liz nods in agreement. It's been a month since she's seen Red. Since Ray has seen his father.

She texted her new address to both Dembe and Red, the duplex she and Ressler bought together to start their married life.

There's an internal connecting door. Ressler lives in the other unit, but comes and goes through the front door on the ground floor also used by Liz and Ray.

They need to stay married at least a year. Maybe longer.

Liz hopes Red returns soon. 

Although his return will present certain problems.

Her son calls her new husband "Wess." He was just starting to call Red "Papa." That will have to stop now. At least until he's old enough to keep a secret.

Ray is so clearly Red's child, with the same deep well of curiosity, his precocious manual dexterity. He'll surely be good at keeping secrets someday, too. Liz marvels at how well their deception is working.

People only see what they expect to see.

***

Dembe pulls open the heavily lined white linen curtains, allowing bright sunlight to fill the master bedroom of the sprawling over water villa in the Maldives.

Red is sprawled naked atop the bed clothes, one hand still clutching the neck of a bottle.

"Ready for a morning swim, Raymond?" he asks, seating himself in a hammock where he can see the clear turquoise water as he waits for Red to awaken.

"Oh god yes," Red groans, rolling over and squinting at Dembe. "Have you ordered the coffee, yet?"

"Second pot," smiles Dembe in return. "And I've booked our tickets as well."

Red groans again, then sits up in bed and rubs at his eyes.

"Raymond, you never asked me to adopt your name." Dembe gazes out across the open ocean. The villa is utterly private. Red hasn't worn clothes since they arrived. "But you are still my family, just the same."

"I don't want to talk about it, Dembe."

It was the photograph that sent him headlong into flight after they completed their work in Mozambique. The wedding announcement in the Times was bad enough. Liz looking poised and joyous in that elegant cream dress was too much.

Dembe can't remember a time his intuition has served him so poorly. He'll understand better once he has the chance to talk to Liz again.


	10. Choose the Domestic

"Really, Red?" Liz is suddenly angry, her face flushed with emotion above the demure collars of her white blouse and trim navy suit jacket. It makes her look young, more like the woman he first met. "You think I'd introduce a real stepfather into Ray's life without discussing it with you first?"

He stares back at her, willing his face to stay calm and cold. The door to her office is closed, but if he starts yelling, he's not sure he will be able to stop.

"So you've considered it?" Quiet enough, but with a vicious edge.

She flinches and looks down at her desk.

"I need to get some work done before I pick up Ray from day care," she says.

That wasn't no. 

He has no right to tell her who to date. Who to marry. Or why.

Ressler is just protecting Red's child, and by extension, Lizzie. Donald Ressler is the hero of this story.

So what role does that leave for Red? The monster? The fool? 

"I'd like to see him tonight."

Liz just keeps staring at the open file on her desk in front of her.

Red is still on his feet. She never invites him to sit down in her office. Although she works with him on blacklisters as willingly as the rest of the team does.

They probably all know. Aram is much too soft-spoken around him, no matter how sarcastically Red addresses him.

He has no rights at all. 

"Please, Lizzie."

She looks up then, a serious expression in her eyes.

"Come by at 6:30," she responds.

***

"Hey Keen, what are you burning?"

Ressler lets himself in and immediately laughs at the smoke billowing through the small duplex kitchen.

"Ress, come out here and help me with this stupid grill," Liz calls to him.

He passes Ray in his highchair, trying to eat peas from the tray with a small plastic spoon, and looks out onto the back deck where Liz is glaring at a smoking Weber grill.

"Like your steaks well done?" he asks her, setting his briefcase on the floor by the open kitchen door and advancing on her, holding out his hand for the lighter fluid.

Liz hands it over and wipes her forehead, leaving a dark smear of soot.

"It wouldn't light, and now it's going crazy," she explains.

"You're a fire hazard," he reproaches her, tossing his suit jacket over the porch railing and tying on the large blue and white striped apron she hands him with a relieved grin.

"I need to finish dinner because Red is coming over in less than an hour and I still haven't vacuumed ..."

There's a loud clunk, then Ray wails from inside the kitchen. 

He's probably thrown his milk cup again.

"I'll get him," he calls to her, turning back towards the kitchen. "Put some more seasoning on those steaks, and don't, whatever you do, put them on the fire without me."

"Wess! Out!!"

Ressler scoops Ray out of his high chair and wipes his face on the apron. He's just pressing a reassuring kiss into the toddler's messy copper curls when the front door opens and Red, immaculately dressed, steps into the chaotic space.

"Reddington?" says Ressler.

Red's expression is beyond bleak. 

"I did ring," he comments, pulling off his thin black leather gloves and tucking them into the pocket of his overcoat. "Perhaps your bell is out of order?"


	11. Choose Family

Liz returns to the kitchen to find Red staring around the disordered floor of her living room and Ressler holding Ray on one hip while trying to wipe mashed green peas from between the toddler's fingers with her last clean dish towel.

"I told you 6:30," she tells Red. The floor is littered with Ray's toys, and a double handful of dry cereal. Her laundry is piled on the low gray couch. At least most of it is folded.

Her sole consolation is that she's wearing a clean blue dress, even if it does have one small wet hand print near the hem. Her hair is clean as well, but still tied up in a high, messy ponytail instead of being neatly curled around her shoulders.

"I brought champagne," Red responds, holding up a bottle. "I thought you might like a drink before dinner."

Liz shrugs helplessly.

"Shall I leave it for the two of you?" he asks, his mouth tightening the way it does when he's about to say something particularly cutting.

"No, Red, Ress was just helping me with the grill." Liz reaches for Ray, sends Ressler a silent message with her eyes. "We usually eat earlier than this."

"I'll put the steaks on and then get out of your hair," Ressler says, right on cue. He heads for the porch.

"No, cook them through for me, please," she tosses over her shoulder, setting Ray on her hip as his widening eyes come to rest on Red, who is still standing by the door in his coat and hat.

For all the world, Liz can't help but notice, as if he wants to flee, but is caught and held by Ray's puzzled green gaze. It has been more than a month, after all. A long time in her son's short life.

"Papa?"

Ray reaches forward gleefully and tries to launch himself from her arms, through space, towards Red.

"Papa!"

Suddenly Red is in motion, setting the champagne down and coming to take Ray from her grasp.

"Open that, would you, Lizzie?" Red asks her, somehow doffing his hat and sliding out of both his overcoat and his suit jacket while responding appropriately to Ray's excited babble.

He tosses his coats over the high back of one of the two stools at her narrow breakfast bar, sets his hat on the bar, then carries Ray out the back door in his vest and shirtsleeves.

"Let's watch Donald make fire, shall we?" he says.

"Wess!" says Ray with excitement, pointing imperiously.

***

It's getting dark.

Red sits opposite Liz at the glass topped table on her deck, sipping the last of his champagne. Trying to make it last.

Ray is drowsing on her lap, staring sleepily at the fat crimson candle burning in the hurricane lantern in the center of the table.

Ressler served their food and departed with his share of the meal, telling Liz there was a game on TV he wanted to watch. The steaks were perfectly cooked.

The dirty plates are stacked in the sink, along with pots, baking sheets, and numerous plastic containers and utensils.

How can he tell Liz that all he wants right now, with all his heart, is to roll up his sleeves and wash those dishes for her?

He wants to be Ressler, coming home to rescue her from the grill.

He wants to tuck Ray into his crib, then take Liz to bed and somehow turn the clock back to their first night together. The most perfect night.

"Ugh, I need to change him before bed," Liz comments with a loud sniff.

"Would you like me to help with that?" Red asks.

She shakes her head.

"No, I've got it," she says, lifting Ray's nodding head to her shoulder and then heaving herself to her feet.

"May I see where he sleeps?" Red asks. He's never been in her home before. Not since the house she shared with Tom Keen. The intimacy of it is making him feel dizzy.

Or perhaps that's just the champagne. He's had the better part of the bottle by now.

"Come on."

***

Liz leads him up the narrow carpeted stairs to the second floor, maneuvering them through the baby gates with the ease of long practice.

At the head of the stairs she turns left to Ray's room, avoiding the door to the bathroom directly in front of them. Thank goodness her bedroom door, down the hall to the right, is firmly closed. There are dresses strewn all over the bed.

Red leans against the door frame behind her as she enters the pale blue room and turns on the wall switch. The soft yellow reading light by the rocking chair comes on. At least this room is tidy - fresh sheets cover the crib mattress, a small flannel comforter hangs waiting on the railing, and the changing table is orderly and well stocked.

Ray sucks on two fingers, blinking up at her, as she changes him and then snaps him into a clean cotton onesie to sleep.

"May I?" asks Red in a soft voice. She'd give anything to hear that voice every night, for the rest of her life.

"Sure," she responds, moving out of the way so that Red can lift Ray. He stands beside the crib, swaying slowly from side to side, Ray's head pillowed against his shoulder.

"I'm just going to wash my hands," Liz whispers. Then she bows her head and walks numbly to the bathroom, where she runs cold water and washes both her hands and her face.

She's already exhausted, but it's Friday. She can sleep in a little in the morning, instead of rushing to get ready for day care.


	12. Choose Love

Flipping off the light, Red lays Ray on his back in the crib and covers him carefully with the comforter, then stands looking down at his sleeping form for a moment as his eyes adjust to the darkness.

Liz kept her own name when she married, so his son's last name is Keen now. 

She doesn't need or want anything Red has to offer. Even his name would only taint her, put their child at risk.

And Liz knows too much about how Red earns his great wealth. She doesn't want his protection, or his money, or his heart.

She just wants Ray to have what she never did - the chance to grow up knowing his father. 

"Red?" Liz is standing in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. She's going to want him to leave now. He heard her yawning on their way up the stairs.

"May I have the rest of the tour?" he asks her.

She shrugs.

"Bathroom here, and my room down the hall," she points. "And that's just a utility closet - two bedrooms, one bath."

"May I see your room, Lizzie?" He has to ask, even if imagining her there is worse than not knowing.

Liz shrugs again, then leads the way down the hall.

"Not very exciting, compared with the types of places you live," she comments, opening the door on a larger room, minimally furnished with just a king size bed and a cheap black dresser.

A yoga mat lies unfurled on the bare wood floor at the far end of the room, directly below a wall-mounted mirror.

Red looks at the bed last. Piled high with blankets, there are only two pillows at the head of the bed, stacked as if Liz has been reading in bed. Something painfully tight inside him unwinds, just a little. She's living alone here with Ray.

Liz darts forward, gathers several dresses from the foot of the bed, and piles them hastily on the dresser.

"Trying to decide what to wear," she explains.

"The blue is a good choice," Red responds, still standing in the doorway. So unwilling to leave this room.

Wait. 

She cared what she was going to wear for his visit?

***

"Thank you," Liz responds, turning from the dresser to find Red blocking the doorway. There's not much to see in her room. No art on the walls yet. She's pretty sure it's the first compliment he's paid her since she found out he was alive.

"You look good, too," she tells him. "Very tan."

And that was probably too personal.

His brows are rising, his gaze leaving her bed and coming to rest on her face.

"Thank you, Lizzie," he says quietly. Still just standing there in his shirtsleeves, the overhead light glinting off the hair sprinkling his forearms, admixed with silver like all his fair, feathery body hair.

Liz remembers the soft skin of his arms and shoulders, the corded muscle beneath. How she bound him to an iron bedstead, one long, drunken night, and then kissed the pulse beating in his bruised wrists when they were finished.

She's the mother of his child. He'll be a part of her life forever. That has to be enough.

Red gives her a crooked little grin.

"Time was, we couldn't just talk in a room like this," he says, glancing over at the bed once again.

Finding private time together was already becoming an obsession for them in the weeks before she became pregnant.

Being in a room with a bed, or a couch, or even a chaise lounge, was enough for them to start eyeing the furniture and each other. Trying to find a way to be alone.

Liz completely forgot herself, she laughed so hard one night at a gallery opening at the Met, when Red kept rolling his eyes at the antique bedroom furniture, as if to say, how about this one? They made very little progress on catching the blacklister that night.

She smiles at the memory.

"Ah, the Met," Red comments, rocking back and forth on his heels, the rather remote expression on his face warming slightly.

Liz sometimes believed he could read her mind. But the last few months have clearly proven that's not always true. She yearns for his love, for his touch, and he treats her with elaborate courtesy. 

"Tell me something, Lizzie," he asks her, leaning against the door frame, still blocking her exit from the room. He folds his arms, squaring his big shoulders. Forcing her to admire the contrast with his slim, elegantly clad legs and expensive shoes.

"Yes, Red?"

"If we never got on that boat, if you found out about our pregnancy on land?" His eyes are lidded, but she can tell how closely he's watching her by the way his mouth moves.

"Yes, Red?" He had to ask her sometime. Liz knows that, has tried to prepare her answer.

She just didn't realize she'd be trying to deliver it in her bedroom. 

With him standing less than three feet away from her. So close she could put out her hand and touch him. Feel the solid flesh of him alive and breathing.

"What would have happened then? What would you have wanted to happen?"

***

He didn't mean to ask her tonight.

Red meant to ask her somewhere beautiful, somewhere special. He wanted to be wearing a tux, presenting his best, most elegant appearance.

Instead, he has grease stains on his tie and his shirt collar from Ray's grasping little fingers.

They are standing in her bedroom, which has clearly not been tidied in expectation of company. The single overhead bulb casts such unflattering pale shadows in contrast with the earlier candlelight.

Red waits for her answer.

Liz folds her slender arms across her chest, mimicking his body language.

"I would have told you, Red." 

"And then?" he prompts her.

She's not meeting his eyes.

Red always tells Liz the truth. She doesn't always reciprocate.

"You can tell me anything, Lizzie," he says finally. "What would you have wanted ...for us?"

She's rubbing her scar, never a good sign.

Finally, she looks up into his eyes with an odd little sigh.

Red braces himself. She's going to tell him. And she doesn't expect him to like her answer.


	13. Choose to Part, or Not

"Not what we have today," she responds finally. "You have to understand, I was a different person then."

"And?" His voice is still gentle, but the lines on his face deepen as she tries to get through the next words. He seems impossibly remote.

"And I would have asked you to take me away. Hide us, keep us safe."

Liz rushes into the next words. Red can't misunderstand her. She couldn't bear the rejection.

"I'm not asking for that now. Please don't think that."

Red leans his head against the door frame for a moment. Bracing himself against the agony of that thought.

Lizzie in his bed, every night. Ray growing up at his side, with his name. Keeping them both safe. How could that possible future have vanished irretrievably into the past, swallowed like everything else he's ever loved?

"I love my job. We're going to be fine now." 

She looks so worried, her blue eyes so intent on his face. Dembe's words come back to him. Focus on Elizabeth.

One more question. Then he'll put on his hat and disappear into the night so she can get some sleep.

"If I took you away, do you think, you would have come to love me, Lizzie?"

Her mouth opens, but no words emerge. Her eyes go liquid.

"I loved you from the first time, Red. I think I always will." She shrugs, gives herself a little hug with her arms still folded. "But I don't expect anything."

The first time. That immense koa wood bed and the scent of flowering ginger wafting in from the gardens. 

How they undressed separately, ceremonially, on either side of the bed, piling their clothing and their weapons and their identities on the floor.

How they slid their bare bodies towards each other beneath the covers, trembling, gazes locked, without speaking.

How eagerly, how tightly Liz held him against her, as if assuring herself he was real, before they finally drew back enough to begin kissing.

The way she whispered his name again and again. Red aches whenever he recalls the tone in her voice.

Oh. That wasn't just passion, incredible and overwhelming as her desire seemed to him at the time. That was Liz telling him she loved him.

"Lizzie," he says, pushing off the door frame and stepping close. "Lizzie."

He takes her face in his hands, leans in to kiss her.

Her arms come around him, her hands sliding beneath his vest, tugging his shirt tail from his trousers. Her hands on his skin.

Red didn't realize how starved for touch he has been for the past two years until this moment.

Her mouth responding so perfectly. Kissing him again as if she never stopped.

"I love you, Red," Liz murmurs between kisses. "I love, love, love you."

Decades since he last heard those words.

***

The blankets are on the floor, and one of the pillows.

Red is staring up at the bright, ugly overhead light fixture, his head on the remaining pillow.

Liz follows his gaze, her head pillowed on Red's chest. She's idly petting him from the swell of his belly to the muscular curve of his thigh. Combing through the sun-lightened fluff of his body hair. He has no tan line at all. 

"Shall I turn out the light?" she offers.

His arms pull her closer.

"No, I'll fall asleep," he responds in a lazy tone.

"Would that be such a bad idea?" Liz asks, mentally reviewing the contents of her kitchen. She can manage a credible breakfast, if she gets up early and bakes muffins.

"I don't want to waste one minute of this night with you," he answers her, his thumb stroking the pale stretch marks at her hip. Ray was not a small baby.

"No time we spend together is a waste," she protests in a whisper. "And anyway, it's not just one night."

Red presses a kiss into her tangled hair.

He hasn't said he loves her. But she's pretty sure she's said it enough for them both.


	14. Choose Forever

Her supposed inheritance comes at the perfect time.

Liz purchases the decrepit mansion with more than an acre of land, and commences extensive renovations while on maternity leave.

Ressler continues to make a name at the bureau for himself, not least for the way he swans about with his wealthy and beautiful profiler wife.

"Ready?" asks Dembe.

Red nods, braces himself as Dembe throws the lever. 

The electric rail car plunges into the darkness of the narrow tunnel, carrying him surely and silently beneath several city blocks, then up under the high stone wall surrounding the estate.

He steps out when it stops, and ascends in the tiny elevator.

"Red! Perfect timing!" announces Liz, greeting him at the elevator door with a kiss, then thrusting their daughter into his arms.

He smiles down at her tiny, yawning face.

"What's for dinner, Lizzie?" he asks, pulling off his gloves as he balances the squirming baby on his shoulder.

Ray comes running.

"Papa!" he exclaims. He looks at the elevator reproachfully.

"No Dembe?" he frowns.

"Ress is out back, deep frying a turkey," she responds, leaning down to wipe Ray's runny nose before picking him up and giving him a comforting hug. "He's had a hundred and one before the Tylenol, but now he wants to go out and help."

Red shakes his head. "It's too cold. Why don't you let him watch some cartoons?"

She rolls her eyes at him. 

"Because his brain will rot and ooze out his ears," she responds fondly.

Red drops a kiss onto Ray's mass of copper curls.

"Maybe just one?" he asks, moving his mouth from his son's head to her jaw, alternating little bites with kisses.

"Oh god, Red, that's not fighting fair," she responds, lidding her eyes at him.

"Mmm?" he asks, licking at the corner of her lips.

"OK, OK, just one," she responds, her laughter silenced as he bends his head and kisses her passionately. Ray giggles in her arms and looks away. 

Liz sets Ray down and he takes his father's hand, skipping at his side in the direction of their home theater. It's located in the center of the house, between the wing she and Red occupy with their children, and Ressler's spacious quarters.

"Come along, time for Popeye," Red announces.

Liz stands watching them go. She'll be back at work soon. Red has a new crop of blacklisters for them. Ressler has kept her up to date on everything she might have missed at the Post Office.

She is living the perfect life.

"Lizzie?"

Red turns, baby on one shoulder, Ray clinging to his other hand.

"Did I tell you today that I love you?"

His eyes are laughing at her. Evoking the memory him of waking her early this morning, reminding her with the potent authority of his body that she's not just a mother and a federal agent, but also a much-beloved and desirable woman.

She grins at him, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She's going to have time to cut up the salad in peace now, and drink a glass of wine.

"You might need to remind me again, later tonight?" she answers him.

Red grins back at her and departs with a little swing of his hips. She stares after him, marveling at the flood of desire suffusing her once again.

This is the perfect life.


End file.
